


i've called off the search (i know exactly where you are)

by 8The_Great_Perhaps8



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 03:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19967416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8The_Great_Perhaps8/pseuds/8The_Great_Perhaps8
Summary: Tenten is stuck in her own head at Neji's funeral.





	i've called off the search (i know exactly where you are)

**Author's Note:**

> title from i feel exhausted by everyone everywhere

“Neji was,” Gai-sensei says, “a splendid shinobi.”

And isn’t that a strange thing to say, that Neji _was?_ Neji should _be,_ Gai-sensei should be saying that Neji _is_ a splendid shinobi.

But, Tenten reminds herself, the only thing Neji _is_ is dead. There is no more Neji, not in this world, not in the bitter, sarcastic, clever blunt mean way that Neji _was._ He might come back some time in the reincarnation cycle- he probably qualifies to come back as a human, if he wanted to, forming his own fate from the start instead of being trapped for more than half his life.

Or maybe he’ll come back as a cat. Neji likes- _liked-_ cats, and they liked him right back. Neji would make a good cat. He always seemed a little jealous of the cats that crawled all over him, headbutting him and meowing at him and getting his clothes coated with fur.

Neji always seemed like he was almost half-cat, mean and distant and loving, easy to bait with dangly things, falling asleep in patches of sunlight whenever he had the time to laze about.

Tenten hopes that Neji gets to laze around more in his next life. He was always so tired and so irritable, probably because he only slept about four hours a night. Maybe in his next life, he’d be some spoiled daimyo’s kid or a spoiled daimyo’s wife’s cat. The next Tora, maybe, allowed to laze about when he wanted and torment genin every other time. That would be a good life for Neji.

“No matter what challenges he faced,” Gai-sensei continues, “Neji persevered.”

Tenten wonders if Neji would skip reincarnation entirely and head to the Pure Lands. He was a skilled warrior, he died in battle, he died protecting someone. Tenten can’t entirely remember the qualifications for going to the Pure Lands, but she’s pretty sure that Neji fits the bill to a T.

“Neji was,” Gai-sensei says, choking up a bit, “a beautiful soul.”

If Gai-sensei tries to describe Neji as ‘youthful’, Tenten is going to punch him in the face. Sure, he describes everyone as ‘youthful’, and if something is a positive adjective, it’s automatically associated with ‘youthful’ in Gai-sensei’s mind, but-

But Neji died when he was eighteen. In less than four months, Lee will be older than Neji will ever get to be. Neji will be forever paralyzed in their memories, stuck in the perfect amber of being eighteen and nearly-a-half, crystallized in the yearly team photographs that they took. The flipbook of Hyuuga Neji’s growth will always end abruptly at eighteen years, three months, one week. Neji is always going to be youthful, because Neji will never have the chance to grow up. He’ll never have the chance for a lot of things- never have the chance to have his seal removed, never have the chance to leave his clan, never have the chance to seriously date someone or get married or have children or retire.

Neji is frozen in the ice of Konoha’s memories, already melting in the heat of celebration, the fire of the lanterns that lit up the sky after Kaguya was defeated. Tenten can feel her memories of Neji already slipping out of her mind, like water from cupped palms- she can no longer remember precisely how he wrinkled his brow when he filled out word puzzles, can no longer recall which of his canines was sharper than the other, can’t picture the precise annoyance on his face when he accidentally ate a sour candy instead of the sweet ones.

If Gai-sensei calls Neji youthful, Tenten is going to punch him before Lee even gets the chance to hold her back.

“As troubled as Neji often was,” Gai-sensei continues, “I am proud to know that he blossomed into a good man.”

On the other side of Lee, Tenten can just barely see Hinata. She’s crying, but softly, now- she was sobbing when Naruto had been speaking, but has quieted since Gai-sensei took the stand.

Tenten knows that it’s not fair for her to dislike Hinata. Hinata’s a sweet girl, perfectly nice, if a bit timid. Hinata, for now, is a year younger than Neji. She had nothing to do with Neji being branded, has probably never even thought about using the brand against him.

Maybe Neji’s anger at the Main House rubbed off on Tenten too much. She knows that Hinata’s own team disliked Neji plenty, because they only ever saw him when he was beating up his timid cousin at the chuunin exams. If Tenten was on Hinata’s team, she’d probably be on Hinata’s side, too.

But Tenten’s seen Neji at his absolute worst, at his pale and clammy and still sweating, eyes twitching as they wait for Gai-sensei at the training ground. She’s heard how his voice shook as he explained the pain, the torture, the _burning_ that came from his curse seal activating. She was the first one he confided in about watching his father scream as his uncle, his father’s identical twin, activated his own curse seal.

Neji would want her to let go of her anger, like he had after the chuunin exams and the secret discussion he had had with his uncle.

She’ll probably get points docked by some heavenly spirit who’s trying to see if she’s good enough for the Pure Lands, but she’ll nurse the grudge until she knows that no more kids are going to get branded.

“Neji was a wonderful student,” Gai-sensei says. “And he was a wonderful friend.”

Tenten hasn’t cried at the funeral yet. Not when she saw Neji’s body, not when she took her seat next to Lee, not when Naruto clumsily described Neji’s last words, and not now, during Gai-sensei’s speech. She probably looks like a cold-blooded bitch, waiting through the funeral for an appointment.

Maybe it’s because she already cried when she first found out. She had been so overwhelmed with relief, at first, had been laughing and cheering and celebrating with the other people in her division, had shared an adrenaline-fueled kiss with a kunoichi and a shinobi from Kumo, had been whooping and cackling and holding her brand new ninja weapons that she had stolen from some nin from a Kumo fairy tale. She had been separated from her team- separated from almost everyone else in Konoha besides Ino-Shika-Cho, and that hardly counted when they had each other.

Tenten, out of all the people who should have known that Neji had died, was the last. Lee and Gai-sensei had been on that battlefield with Neji, had fought alongside him, but Tenten- the girl, the civilian orphan, the only one on Team Gai who couldn’t manage a single prodigious taijutsu style- had been in Kumo, on the ocean waves breaking against the cliffs, fighting for her life against nin that were about as dangerous as a particularly determined ant, compared to fighting Madara and Kaguya and the millions of plant clones.

She had been riding a wave of relief, of thank-whoever-is-listening-that-I’m-alive, when she had finally made it back to Lee and Gai-sensei and they had told her, while she was still laughing with the Kumo-nin that she had befriended, that Neji was dead.

She hadn’t wanted to believe it, at first. Because Sakura had been there, Sakura who was better than Tsunade at everything. And besides that, Lee and Gai-sensei had been there, should have been protecting Neji. And besides that, Tenten _hadn’t_ been there. She had been on the breaking ocean waves, the frothing crests, fighting the equivalent of Genin’s First D-Rank Enemy in the war for the life of every single person on the planet, and Neji had died without her.

When they had been twelve and a half, fresh enough out of the Academy that they barely knew which end of the kunai went towards the enemy but experienced enough to resent that, they had made a pact to be together forever.

“Team Gai ‘til I die,” Neji had joked, pinkies locked with Lee and Tenten at the same time. It had been the first time he had joked with them, maybe the first time that he had even smiled at them, and it had vanished so quickly that they spent the next six weeks debating whether or not it had even happened.

And he had gone and died without her.

They had been joking in Suna, before they’d been split up for the coming battle, a cup of bitter sake shared between her and Neji while Lee nursed a pomegranate soda.

“Team Gai ‘til we die,” Neji had said, raising his sakazuki in a toast. Tenten had lightly knocked her own against his, and Lee had sent the sake in both their containers spilling as he shoved his soda glass against the ceramic.

_We._ Not “‘til _I_ die,” but _we._ The three of them, together as a unit, together forever, and Neji had died without Tenten anywhere near him.

She had sobbed so hard once it finally sank in, coming into her mind and her heart like a rock into a pond, heavy and rippling and disturbing all the facts that the pond had known. Lee and Gai-sensei had tried to comfort her, tried to hug her, but they had sobbed when Neji had first died. Hinata had tried to comfort her, but Hinata was why Neji died, in all the ways that mattered, and Tenten hadn’t known his last words, then.

Maybe she’s already shed all the tears she will for Hyuuga Neji. Maybe she cried so much when she had first heard, brain shooting so many neurotransmitters so many different directions that she had almost thought she was dying, that she couldn’t cry anymore at all. Maybe she’d turn out like some Hyuuga, only overemotional on the inside, while her face stayed completely blank. Or like Kakashi, only one eye ever moving to let people know how she felt.

Maybe she’s in shock. Maybe she’s still half-afraid that Neji’s going to be leaning up against some tree next time she goes to Team Gai’s training grounds, his arms crossed, with a smug look on his face so that he can say “Ha, as if I’d die to such a fourth-rate attack.”

Maybe she really is just a stone-cold bitch.

“Neji had so many wonderful friends,” Gai-sensei is saying, “and he lived his life- gave his life- for his wonderful friends.”

Neji hadn’t really been Tenten’s ‘friend’ until she and Lee had both put him in the ground at least twice, and he had stopped bitching about how neither of them were fit to be ninja. He had started being a lot less pissy about his fate thing, once she and Lee had both proven themselves. Well, for them, at least- Neji was still convinced that he was destined to ‘live his life as a caged bird’.

When Tenten read his palm, he had been destined for a long and happy life, with a freely-given heart, wealth difficult to find in gold but simple in friendships.

So apparently, she and Neji have both been full of shit about fate and destiny.

Neji hadn’t really ever had many friends. Even back in the academy, he had always been held separate- had been the standard for everyone else to aspire to, even though he was kind of a dick back then and everyone had kind of hated him. Tenten’s more than certain that she and Lee were Neji’s best friends, and Neji was definitely hers and Lee’s. They clicked together in a way that none of the rest of the genin teams from their generation really had, and over the years that they spent sparring with each other and going on missions together, they had gotten to know each other well enough to predict what they would say. Even once Neji made jounin and got to choose the people who went on his missions, his first choices were always Tenten and Lee.

Tenten and Lee had friends outside of Team Gai, though. Lee had declared Naruto his eternal rival, which probably meant that they were best friends and were engaged. And Lee still talked with the Suna kid who broke all his bones in the chuunin exams. Tenten was friendly enough with Sakura, who was the only other civilian shinobi within five years of Tenten. And Tenten talked shop with Ino, sometimes, seeing what poisons would work best with grooved weapons versus weapons that are just oiled with poison.

Neji wasn’t really friends with anybody. At least, not friends with any of the other genin- they were all too close with Hinata, and they held grudges over how Neji had treated her during the chuunin exams. Maybe he and Hinata _had_ been friends, when Neji died- forgiving each other for what they couldn’t control and what they could, close enough to call each other family, because he and she were both forgiving in different ways.

“Neji truly was the epitome of the Konoha shinobi.”

Neji had wanted to travel. Had wanted to go to Suna, Kiri, Taki Kusa Nami Mizu, had wanted to explore the world and see what there was, had wanted to be more than he was supposed to be.

About a hundred percent of the missions that Tenten and Neji and Lee went on, once Neji was a jounin, were outside of the Land of Fire, and Tenten bitched about it every time, because Neji insisted on _walking_ to most of those places, walking through the villages they were supposed to investigate like tourists. Neji had always claimed that it was for infiltration, that tourists were a lot less suspicious than shinobi.

But his eyes fucking _sparkled_ when he saw overpriced tchotchkes, and he bought souvenirs from every town that he went to, because Neji was a sucker, and Tenten never managed to break him from that habit, no matter how hard she tried.

If it weren’t for his father, Tenten doesn’t think Neji would’ve become a shinobi. Maybe a chef- he always enjoyed cooking, or, at least, he enjoyed bitching about Lee’s and Tenten’s cooking. Or a gardener, he always had a green thumb. Or a potter, maybe, or a shop owner or a musician or a fucking bartender. Something a little less deadly than being a shinobi.

Lee had liked being a shinobi, though. Had enjoyed having a purpose. Had been delighted with all the possibilities, had loved studying all the different ninja arts, had liked having clear and obvious goals to achieve.

Tenten feels a little like a traitor for wishing that Neji had been something besides what he was.

Gai-sensei has come down from the podium, now, having finished his speech without making Tenten punch him in the face. There’s a moment of awkwardness, as the podium is empty, before Tenten stands up with a sigh.

She probably should have thought about what she was going to say ahead of time, but Neji had always enjoyed her spontaneity. 


End file.
